Abit AW9D Max socket 775 Motherboard

I/O and BIOS

The I/O panels on today's boards seem to be getting smaller and smaller, but the AW9D seems to feature a fairly decent assortment of input options on it.

Once again abit have included the standard 4 USB ports on the rear panel, but this isn't really a problem as you have another four available as internal expansions and there is an included PCI I/O backplate for this purpose.

Also added is the e-SATA (external SATA) port for those of you embracing the new technology. abit are still including legacy mouse and keyboard options which is good as occasionally legacy keyboards and mice are needed for the ultra-high overclocks.

The card has almost everything you need on a sound card including Optical SP-DIF and full 7.1 surround sound. The only think that could be added would be coaxial, but this is not necessarily something that is standard on soundcards.

Once again abit have opted for Pheonix Award BIOS on their motherboard. I like the layout of Phoenix BIOS and it's a good solid BIOS. I found that it was necessary to update the BIOS to do my testing as the newer BIOS revision gave me the option to adjust the multiplier and also changed the lowest possible CPU voltage from 1.375v to the proper 1.3v. It seems abit are producing BIOS updates on a regular basis so it may well be worth taking a look at their site for updates.

abit use the µGuru™ Utility in the BIOS to overclock from. Let's see what this provides you with:

The µGuru™ part of the BIOS offers the overclocker all of the options they should want. Notice that the CPU Multiplier is available for change after I flashed the BIOS.

Here we see the multiplier is downwards adjustable from 6 to 10. This is a definite improvement from the AB9 and the Asus P5W DH Deluxe that I use in my own PC. The CPU voltage adjusts from 1.3v to 1.725v in 0.025v increments. The original BIOS that I had been sent had the default voltage as 1.375v, which is rather too high. I hope abit will change this in the shipping versions as this overvolts the CPU at stock speeds. A BIOS flash sorted this for me though.

As you can see the FSB is adjustable from 133MHz to 600MHz. We'll see how the board fares later on.

The Timings options are in the chipset features. Unlike many 939 platforms it seems Intel platforms do not require as much timings tweaking.

RAM voltage is given a respectable 1.8v to 2.65v and there is four selectable sets of speed that are associated with the CPU. I feel that Intel platforms should provide more divider options than these, to help those with RAM that just won't run above its rated speed. This is not a criticism of the AW9D, but rather inherent in the platform itself.

The MCH & PCI 1.5 voltage is adjustable in 0.01 increments from 1.5v all the way up to 2.0v. This is a very good range of adjustability and I was happy when I saw this.

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